Thanks Tim for the scans of the drawings. Tim sent me a drawing of
the front and back view of the VAX 11/785. This confirms:

- the UNIBUS is yet another cabinet. Does everyone on this list
  who has an 11/78x have that UNIBUS cabinet just to plug in one
  ethernet card? That seems like a waste? Or do you connect to 
  something else as a UNIBUS cabinet, like a PDP-11? Rackmount
  UNIBUS card cage? What type of power supply does the UNIBUS
  need?

- is there any other way to hook ethernet to a VAX 11/78x? Sounds
  like I would want to use the IP over CI trick to my 6000 and
  route to Ethernet from there instead of bothering with the 
  UNIBUS. OTOH, can a single UNIBUS be used by two computers?
  If so, I should get a VAXBI to UNIBUS adapter too, and share
  the UNIBUS between 6000 and 11/785, I don't think it'll work
  that way.

- I gather that the IO panel is used for the UNIBUS cable (that
  must be a big thing) and for the MASSBUS devices. I was wondering
  if the MASSBUS had a backplane, but I gather it is a cable-bus,
  much like DSSI or SCSI, is that right?

- What do you use for disks? It seems like I should finally get
  a star coupler and HSC to run both my 6000s and the (future)
  11/785 from. Sounds like MASSBUS storage is rather obsolete (even
  in hobbyist terms). I suppose I would shy away from these 200+ kg 
  RMxx devices, or are there ones that are more graceful? Are those
  MFM devices anyway that are known to fail?

- So the massbus is essentially a useless and obsolete appendix,
  or is there any other use for it?

Thanks,
-Gunther


-- 
Gunther Schadow, M.D., Ph.D.                    gschadow@regenstrief.org
Medical Information Scientist      Regenstrief Institute for Health Care
Adjunct Assistant Professor        Indiana University School of Medicine
tel:1(317)630-7960                         http://aurora.regenstrief.org